How Technology Reaches Deeper Than We Think
Mark Tarpley, Ph.D.
Saint Kosmas Conference
California
November 2019
INTRODUCTORY KEYNOTE ADDRESS
This is the first of seven presentations in a series on “Technology & Orthodoxy.”
© Copyright 2019 Forgotten Lighthouse. All rights reserved.
OUTLINE of the talk: “How Technology Reaches Deeper Than We Think”
© Copyright 2019 Forgotten Lighthouse. All rights reserved.
Part I: An Introduction
Technology is a difficult topic. Technology reaches deep into our lives in numerous ways. It can be an emotional conversation and personal. Our goal at this conference is to take the time to reflect, pause, think about technology in our lives.
My two personal goals for this conference:
To help people ask better questions about the use of technology in their daily lives.
To know what standard by which to measure the use of technology in our lives today.
Exercise: Write down all the pros and cons you can think of with the internet.
Quotes from the technology leaders of today.
“Some threats to freedom we recognize immediately; others take time to reveal themselves for what they are. In the case of this intelligent, adversarial persuasion that increasingly pervades human life, the process of recognition is only beginning. The threats, by contrast, are now quite mature and deeply entrenched. As a result, it may be too late to bring these adversarial systems onto our side. They may now be too embedded in our lives to extricate. I do not believe this to be the case myself—the situation is not entirely hopeless—but the gate to salvation is narrow, and closing quickly.”
— James Williams
“So, your kids must love the iPad?” I asked Mr. [Steve] Jobs, trying to change the subject. The company’s first tablet was just hitting the shelves. “They haven’t used it,” he told me. “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”
― Nick Bilton from his interview with Steve Jobs
“One reason I think it is particularly important for us to talk about this now is that we may be the last generation that can remember life before.”
— Justin Rosenstein (developer of the “like” on Facebook)
The current information revolution is a cultural revolution, a social revolution, a thoroughgoing technological revolution that involves not just information, but labor, leisure, entertainment, communication, education, culture and thus is part of a major cultural and social shift.
— Bill Gates
“What Steve Jobs and I did—and at the same time Bill Gates and Paul Allen did—we had no savings accounts, no friends that could loan us money. But we had ideas, and I wanted all my life to be a part of a revolution.”
— Steve Wozniak
“Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They’re keeping up with their friends and family, but they’re also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They’re connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It’s almost a disadvantage if you’re not on it now.”
— Mark Zuckerberg
Part II: A Few Cautionary Points and Common Misperceptions
1. Technology should not be thought of as an either/or:
Every technology offers some sort of benefit; otherwise, people would not use them. For example, it is obvious to everyone that having an “all-in-one device” with a phone, email, a mirror app, flashlight and (note how many purposes) makes life more convenient in a certain sense. Where we radically falter is identifying what we lose, what challenges the smartphone creates in our lives, and in particular, the challenges that are difficult to identify.
2. Christianity is not anti-technology:
Christians have produced amazing technologies over the centuries. One only has to look at our beautiful, historic churches to see the creative capacity of man to produce immense beautiful and awe-inspiring structures to the glory of God. The question we are addressing is specifically the technologies that we are confronted with in our own time, not whether technologies should be produced.
3. In order for technologies to be useful or good, they do not have to have be created by Christians.
Christians have embraced those good things produced by other cultures from the very beginning. One only has to look at the Christian relationship to the ancient Greek culture to see numerous examples. Even the writing of the New Testament assumed the use of certain technologies in order to be written down.
4. We live in a post-Christian society:
We are not living in a culture that is anticipating the coming of Christ like the Hellenistic/Greek world or the Slavic world or even the Alaskan people. We are largely a culture that has its foundations in Christianity and has rejected both Christ and the culture that is produced by a Christian civilization.
5. We are not seeking to go back to an earlier more “ideal” time:
Such an idea is impossible. If we speak of return, it is in terms of a return to God, but not an historical period, and in our return to God, we will find the proper path forward.
6. Technologies we are concerned about today are different in a fundamental way than other historical technologies:
When a talk such as this is given about technology, you are not attending this conference to talk about technologies such as forks, pencils, port-a-cribs, and barbed wire. You are coming to discuss technologies such as internet, artificial intelligence, and the smartphone. For example, we should not confuse a technology like the shovel or the sword with the smartphone in terms of its impact on our daily living. The smartphone’s integrative capacity in our lives is unlike other technologies. Its integrative capacity into every aspect of our lives 24-hours a day and its ability to create dependency is of an entirely different magnitude then even powerful technologies such as the mechanical clock that mechanized time or the printing press that produced the spreading of ideas at a rate previously unknown.
7. While the ideal must always be upheld, we may not always be able to get there:
We must be humbled by our circumstances and push forward. In other words, life is messy, and life has always been messy since the time of the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden.
8. The risk of oversimplification:
When trying to understand complex realities, we often try to categorize our ideas in order to make sense of what is happening. Such categorizations can be very useful, but also run the risk of oversimplifying the reality itself. I offer these three layers as a way to begin to wrap our minds around the nature of technology and its implications in our daily lives.
Part III: The Three Layers of Technology
Surface layer (function): How we use it and what it does for us. An example would be a car. The cars primary accepted purpose is to allow us to move across long distances in a relatively short amount of time. Another example would be a chair. The chairs primary purpose is to provide a means by which we can sit down and rest from standing or having to lay down.
Middle layer (form): McLuhan has so famously said the “medium is the message.” This idea compromises the middle layer which addresses the form in which content is delivered as the primary message.
The Bottom layer: The philosophical assumptions and values that establish a particular culture upon which the form and function rest.
The Bottom Layer
The technology we have today did not just emerge out of an inevitable process of historical innovation – a process we casually and uncritically refer to as “human progress” in our culture. This concept we uphold today of “human progress” assumes that real solutions to real human problems can actually be achieved through technological advancement. Another assumption within this definition of “human progress” is that society today is “further along” than other more “primitive” civilizations, and in being “more advanced” is better. One only has to think of the general stereotypes of cave men and barbarianism that is cast upon more ancient civilizations in contrast to our more advanced and superior culture of today. This definition of “human progress” also assumes that that which is to come will be better than what we have today, so we should be prepared to be dispensed with by the same judgment held by future generations as well. Of course, such a definition of “human progress” rests upon specific undisclosed philosophical assumptions about what it means to be a “human” and how we ought to define “progress.” Further, no one seems to find it important to discuss what these assumptions actually are, nor does anyone seem to know where we are exactly progressing towards.
But why are these assumptions largely ignored by society today? Well, in large part, it is because these assumptions are buried so deep, they are often hard to unearth. However, it is precisely these hidden assumptions that are buried deep below the surface of the technology conversation that I would like to begin considering in order to demonstrate technology indeed reaches deeper than we think. In order to understand this bottom layer, we can use the image of a garden.
The Technology Garden:
Let’s imagine a “technology” garden – a garden capable of producing the smartphone. Every garden possesses a type of soil. If we were to run tests on the soil of this “technology” garden, what would we find in this particular soil that could produce the smartphone?
We shouldn’t be surprised to find all sorts of “isms” in the soil - individualism, consumerism, hedonism, scientism.
Upon further testing of the soil, we discover that these “isms” only conceal a deeper component in the soil, which is materialism. And upon an even deeper analysis, within this materialism is identified a fundamental rejection of God born out of a deep faith in reason, not faith in God.
If we extend our metaphor of the garden to think of the garden as a culture, then what kind of values are of primary concern in this “technology” garden. Well, the values of this specific garden would be efficiency, speed, volume, overcoming distance, distraction, manipulation, invasiveness-lack of privacy, isolation, false idealism, and the list goes on.
DOT.god
What we find in this garden is a culture that has deified technology such that technology becomes the organizing principle of man’s life. If you will, a “new gospel” has emerged. Man takes direction from technology, seeks to solve his problems through technology, finds his source of authority from technology, and even finds consolation in technology. We even talk to our technology as if it were a human. I call this god “DOT.god” in which DOT stands for Deification of Technology. One could call this god the Tech-god, but I believe it is important to emphasize that technology is not the god. Technology is not new. What is new is the emergence of the deification of technology. With the deification of technology, something new happens in which technology assumes a metaphysical status through the control that technology exerts within our lives, through its deification. Later in the talk, we will explore further the “DOT.god.”
Let’s contrast this technology-garden with another garden.
The Church Garden:
If we were to analyze the soil of the Church, understood as the Body of Christ, what would we find in this soil?
From an investigation of the texture of this soil, we would find the following: self-emptying love, love for one’s neighbor, persons and community, self- denial, ascetisim, prayer, acts of mercy, etc.
And what would be the values contained within this culture? Faith, hope, patience, kindness, joy, mercy, etc.
And who is the God of this garden? The Triune God who humbled Himself to take on our human nature, undergo death on the cross, and rise in glory through the conquering of death on the third day.
So, here we have two competing gardens, that is cultures, that seek to make a claim on the whole man. As a result, conflict is unavoidable.
Four Take-Aways Regarding this Bottom Layer:
Point #1: We should not merely think about technologies such as the smartphone as an isolated technology apart from the culture within which it thrives. Certain technologies can only thrive within certain types of environments. Take, for example, the television. If I were to place a television in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, would the television be able to fulfill its intended purpose? Of course, not. At best, it could be used as a stepping stool or a storage space. It is important to understand that technologies thrive within certain cultures in particular ways.
Point #2: Closely tied to point #1, we should understand that the challenge of technology today is not merely the technology, but the culture within which these types of technologies are nurtured. We must think about the type of culture we live in today, and what the underlying assumptions and values are that the society holds that allows such technologies to emerge. As illustrated through the garden example, the Christian God and the DOT.god, that is, the “deification of technology” seek to occupy the same space in our lives. One will ultimately win out our affections.
Point #3: The deeper a culture roots itself within a society, the harder it is to function as a counter-culture. Another way of saying this idea is that cultures naturally seek to expel oppositional elements. One only has to try to function without a smartphone in our country today. Most jobs and schools, at a minimum, require the speed and avenues of communication just to participate in the community. Without a smartphone, participation in the broader culture is difficult at best, perhaps impossible in some instances. This fact is not merely because everyone uses a smartphone. Below this surface layer lurks all of the hidden assumptions and values that are carried with the smartphone in terms of what the culture really cares about – efficiency, speed, volume, information, distraction, and so on and what the culture also rejects – patience, reflection, deep thinking, self-sacrifice, and so on. Just consider using a smartphone vs. a dumbphone. What happens? Just consider the issues of speed and miscommunication through the medium.
Point #4: The assumptions embedded in a technology will always play themselves out. For example, the ideological bias of a television within our culture is amusement. Exceptions may occur in which something serious occurs through a television, but in the end, the medium’s bias will prevail. Think about how politics, religion, education, and news have all been bent to the aim of entertainment. Similarly, the smartphone has an ideological bias towards isolation, addiction, distraction, speed, consuming of information, quick thinking, and a rejection of reflection, stillness, solitude, concentration, and personal relationships. Even if, at times, the smartphone appears to connect us with others in meaningful ways, the element of isolation will ultimately dominate as isolation is built into the DNA of the smartphone. Just like a plant has an internal DNA that produces the anticipated fruit, so also does a technology within a given culture.
The Middle Layer
Marshall McLuhan best captured the understanding of this middle layer when he said, “the medium is the message,” but what exactly does this mean? Because we are dealing with the deeper layers of technology, examples will prove helpful.
*Two Examples:
1. King Thamus:
The first example comes from a Platonic dialogue entitled Phaedrus. Socrates is discussing with Phaedrus the propriety and impropriety of writing. The basis of the discussion is how to please god.
In order to instruct Phaedrus on this question, Socrates tells a story. He explains that one of the old gods name Theuth who had invented many important things including numbers and calculation, geometry and astronomy, and above all writing, came to Thamus, who was the king of the whole country of Egypt. Theuth brings his inventions to King Thamus, hoping to benefit the Egyptian people with these inventions, but King Thamus has concerns regarding introducing writing to his people.
King Thamus’ principle concern centers on the nature of and relationship between memory and wisdom. Theuth claims that writing “will make the people of Egypt wiser and improve their memories.” In response, the king questions whether the person who is the creator of the art, in this case writing, is able to also properly judge the benefits and harms of the invention, since the creator has a natural attachment to his own creation. Thamus goes on to claim that the introduction of writing into his kingdom will have “the very opposite” effect on his kingdom proposed by Theuth.
And here we come to the critical point for our purposes. King Thamus begins to explain how the culture of his kingdom will not remain the same with the addition of writing. Rather, introducing writing will create a basic shift within the culture of his kingdom. Writing will redefine the nature of wisdom, which is foundational to what Thamus believes is necessary for his kingdom in order to please the gods.
Thamus explains that writing will “implant forgetfulness” in the souls of his people because they will no longer use their memory but rely on what has been written down. Their knowledge will no longer be possessed within themselves but rather through “external marks.” Thamus goes on to explain that, in fact, what appears to be wisdom is only the imitation of wisdom because the people will appear to know much but, in actuality, possess very little within themselves. The result? They will be filled with pride, that is, “the conceit of wisdom” and place a “burden on their fellows” rather than be of service to one another, and his kingdom will be weakened by the introduction of writing.
Socrates, thus concludes that living speech is the highest form of communication and writing is made in its image.
2. Television:
For the second example, I point you in the direction of Neil Postman’s well-known work Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business in the hope that you will pursue further reading on the topic of technology after the conference. In this important work, Postman demonstrates that almost everything put through the medium of television comes out as entertainment. Politics, education, religion, and news all bow to the ideological bias of the television to produce entertainment in America. In politics, one could hardly imagine a Lincoln-Douglas debate of 6-8 hours taking place among us today. We can hardly attend to 1-minute responses and what we are largely concerned with is optics, not the substance of the message since there is not any substance any way. Take religion. Could you image a sermon by St. John Chrysostom being delivered over television outside the context of the Divine Liturgy. The ratings of any television network would plummet, especially if the viewer were required to stand for the entire sermon. And, of course, we all recognize that Sesame Street was never for the purposes of educating our children, but to serve as a free baby- sitting service that largely numbed the minds of children instead of promoting active, critical thinking. I mean, sitting down and actually reading to your children will far better educate your child then staring at the television screen – we all know that now. And finally, news on television was largely modeled after sitcoms with a cast of characters in order to entertain – the dumb jock (sports caster), the ditsy blond and old wise man (two news leads), the nerd (the weather man), and so on.
In the example of television, what we find is that the message of amusement and entertainment is the real message of the television, not the information delivered through the television. The information becomes secondary to the deeper message which is that the purpose of life is to be amused and entertained. One only has to watch a political presidential debate or a religious service to see that the entire event is staged in order to draw viewers and high ratings through amusement as its primary purpose. There is a certain form that television demands through which the content must be conformed, and in America, that form is amusement.
I think of how the word “fun” has almost completely taken control of our vocabulary. Everything has to be fun – school, home, sports, church – or it is not worth doing. Huxley was right. Our culture is more susceptible to enslavement to pleasure then a totalitarian government. We willing enslave ourselves to the pursuit of pleasure.
The point in these two examples is that the actual message we receive is not the content or function of the technology, but rather the form of the technology. As Marshall McLuhan said so well, information or function is merely “the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.” In other words, a bait and switch is taking place in which we think all we are getting through a search on the internet is information, when, in fact, what is really happening to us is something much more profound. The medium, that is, the internet itself is reshaping our behaviors, habits of thought, neurological wiring, use of language, definition of terms such as friend and community, and the list goes on. This new DOT.god is able to build Its culture through mediums using the bait of function because these new technologies are birthed out of a post-Christian culture.
Quote from St. Paisios the Athonite
The Surface Layer:
I will not speak of the surface layer. We know it all too well in terms of the functions that technology provides for us – internet searches, apps on our phones, text message, facetime, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc. That is why we choose to use, for example, the internet and the smartphone and there are real advantages.
Part IV: A Bad Friend
The encounter between the culture of Christianity and the technology- culture is unique in that unlike the collision of the Ancient Pagan world and Christianity, this technology-culture is produced out of a rejection of Christ, not an anticipation of receiving Christ as in the Ancient world. Further, the DOT.god is not an atheistic state or a competing religion that openly proclaims a different god nor is the DOT.god an individual passion that takes over an individual’s daily living such as alcohol or drugs. The DOT.god is not even the idol of self-worship.
DOT.god is more like a bad friend. A bad friend is one that you do derive real enjoyment from. Yet, the more you are around him, the more trouble you find yourself getting into. Other friends will tell you that you are different. Something has changed about you and not in a good way. Yet, you will continue to defend your friendship because your new friend makes you happy and feel good. Eventually, this new friendship will break down, but not until you have a trail of broken relationships and a ruined reputation.
You see, DOT.god is silent, seductive, and “helpful” – “helpful” in that many Christians are willing to defend the benefits of technology-culture over and against the perceived negative consequences. I say perceived specifically because the rise of the DOT.god has come quietly and largely without resistance, producing a silent revolution while concealing its real “agenda.” As a result, we voluntarily embrace our own enslavement to the DOT.god, re-centering our lives around this false god. Yet, the shift is subtle and almost imperceptible while undergoing this change. However, when the DOT.god is finished with you, it will have redefined your entire world into its own image without you knowing it, and the change will have been comprehensive – touching every aspect of our lives. The great deception is that we as Christians still appear to engage in the same “Christian” activities, but space, time, relationships, language, just to name a few, have all been redefined and no one notices. Take Facebook as an example – friends, community, compassion, concern, etc.
What are we as Christians to do about this new god who has slipped quietly not only into the surrounding culture but also into our homes and churches by way of our own invitation? Again, to be clear, I am not talking about the use of technology in our homes. Cultures across the world, including Christian culture, have always had technology. What is new is the “deification of technology” such that it takes the form of a god with its own competing culture, seeking to lay claim to our entire lives.
The point I am trying to make is not that technology in itself is a problem. Technology in itself is not the new god. Rather, something new has happened in our own time with respect to technology and our surrounding culture that did not just happen overnight and is previously unknown in history. Again, civilizations have always used technology. Rather, the DOT.god – the “Deification of Technology” god has emerged, and this new god seeks to cast a shadow of control over our entire lives. I believe most people at a gut level know something is not right with respect to our relationship with technology and how we conduct our daily lives as Christians. Yet, catching a shadow is elusive. As a result, most people are not quite able to pinpoint the source of the problem. However, if it is the case that there is a problem, shouldn’t we at least pause to consider its implications and the layers associated with it? Perhaps, we should, even if just for a moment, assuming that the DOT-god will not steal that moment from us as well.
Part V: By Way of Conclusion
A Return to our pros and cons exercise.
Question #1: Evaluate your list based on the layers you identified. The surface layer is #1, middle layer #2, and bottom layer #3. How many of your pros and cons considered layers #2 and #3. These are the most often neglected layers when evaluating technology.
Here is my list of cons.
Cons:
Redefines our habits of behavior and daily routines
Reduction of contemplation
Redefinition of community as network
Less knowledge despite more information
Less human autonomy through increased machine dependency
Takes up time from other activities
Builds skepticism and distrust through information glut
Produces a new purpose in life to consume information
Produces a delusion that real human problems are solved through increased access to information.
Redefines idea of friendship
Decreases ability to concentrate
Results in the commodification of information
Destruction of space as purposed
Redefinition/false sense of time
Redefinition of personal relationships
Redefinition of personal sacrifice
Produces hyper-communication
Produces isolation
Cultivates disembodied relationships
Reduces interpersonal contacts
Removes privacy
Creates a false sense of freedom
Reduction in the public space
Produces false identities/avatars/false self-image/false identity
Decline in the ability to think in a linear fashion
Time is experienced as disruption instead of flow
Value of speed
Value of efficiency
Task-oriented life
Addiction through dopamine
Neurological rewiring of the brain towards speed and quick-thinking
Loss of ability for deep thinking and reflection
Loss of solitude
Redefinition of authority
Increased crime through cyber attacks
Impersonal communication that can lead to slander and anonymous attacks
A person’s history is never forgotten
Promotion of violence through video games and pornography
Anxiety, fatigue, stress, and sleep problems
Lack of physical exercise
Reduction in intimacy and true affection
A retreat from boredom
Loss of personal identity
Creation of an echo chamber in terms of how one views the world
False sense of affirmation
The rise of the image over the text
Reduction of language in terms of complexity
Redefinition of reading
Loss of memory
False sense of control
This opening talk is just that – an opening talk. The goal is to show how technology reaches deeper than we think. There are layers to the technology discussion, and too often, the conversation remains at the surface layer, and we neglect the middle and bottom layers.
What is important for us to consider in light of these deeper layers is that we are Christians. As Christians, we have a standard by which we aim in our lives. This standard, who of course is Jesus Christ, is manifested to us within the life of the Church. We are not blind to our purpose in life. We know our aim is to “commend ourselves and each other and our whole lives unto Christ our God.” And it is in this light that we will explore in the sessions that follow how we assess and measure the impact of technology in our lives today.
Again, my hope for this conference as stated at the outset is two-fold:
To help people ask better questions about the use of technology.
To know what standard by which to measure the use of technology in our lives today.
There are no easy answers. However, if we can penetrate more deeply into these questions, we can begin to more deeply align our lives with true progress, which is drawing closer to the source of life each day, who is Jesus Christ.
© Copyright 2019 Forgotten Lighthouse. All rights reserved.
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